The Las Vegas Experiment

    For more than two years, I have envisioned the field class visiting Las Vegas to experience the king of all theme parks, the Vegas Strip.  So this past year I made it happen.  I considered a few things with this decision.  First, it’s a very urban environment with near-nightmarish traffic congestion.  Second, I would probably have to “scout out” the place before visiting, since arriving unplanned in a small town in northern New Mexico is much unlike “winging it” in a hot-wired city like Vegas.  Third, it was too far away for a day trip.  Thus, we would have to integrate it into a larger trip elsewhere.  Finally, we would have to keep the students busy in Vegas so that “Sin City” would not exert its countless temptations on them.  So in February 2001, I set about planning a trip through northern Arizona, southern Utah, and into southern Las Vegas.  A four day, three-night trip would be required, and this would be a great opportunity to experience “Mormon Country” in southern Utah.  The geography of religion and the Mormon experience would certainly play a prominent theme on this trip.  A great opportunity for students (and myself) to study Mormon landscapes!  I mean, we are on the periphery of Deseret, once a newly-forming nation-state rapidly expanding during the 19th century from its core at Salt Lake City.  Today in 2001, it is the world’s seventh largest religion and growing more rapidly than any other religion in the world.  Mormonism is basically the 21st century version of Islam (in terms of its growth and diffusion, not its religious belief systems).  And we’re right at its core, globally speaking, here in northern Arizona.
    So the idea originally was a four-day trip into southern Utah, Zion National Park, and into Nevada where we would “zip” over to the little town of Rachel, the unofficial gateway to the legendary Area 51 and Groom Lake.  This is one of the nation’s “UFO capitals,” aside from Roswell.  Rachel looked to be a few hours from Vegas.  On the actual trip, Rachel didn't "make the final cut" of places to visit due to its distance from eastern Nevada.  Simply not enough time.  Initially, I had also considered running the trip from west to east, visiting Las Vegas on the first or second day and traveling into Utah from there, ending at Lees Ferry at the east end of the Grand Canyon.  A few problems with that, as I thought through it…or better yet, there were excellent reasons for actually running the trip in the opposite direction, from east to west.  First, Vegas would be one of the last stops, not the first, on this four-day trip.  Experiencing such a grand, exciting place at the beginning might hold the potential to be a letdown for students on the rest of the trip.  Second, of the three camp sites required for the trip, two of them would probably be in Utah, and those would be the ones with facilities: showers and restrooms, most particularly.  The campsite in the Cerbats range, southeast of Vegas, where Lee and I had already decided to stay, had no such marvels of civilization.  As he called it, the Cerbats site was “throw-down,” and it was an easy half-hour rocky trip up a dirt road that overlooks the little town of Chloride.  I thought, well, we had better do that site last, since the next day we could head back to Flagstaff and wash up.  Better to do that road at the end of the trip than at the beginning.  So, I discussed with Lee my reasoning in March, and it was done.  We would travel on this four-day trip from east to west, beginning at Lee’s Ferry.  It would be our longest trip to date, and it would be the last one of this year’s field class.  Also, kind of like a grand finale to a concert, Las Vegas would be the last stop representing various processes of human and urban geography, while the Meadview Overlook at Pearce Ferry would serve as the final stop for physical geography.  Then we could all head home.
     In March, I fulfilled one of my own requirements by planning a “scouting trip” along the proposed route for the field class.  My wife and I treated it as a vacation as well, so it doubled in its purpose.  Further, neither she nor I had been to Vegas since the 80s, which means that it would be almost an entirely different place.  Vegas has completely reinvented itself since then.  So we planned to spend a night there and take in the sites along the famous Strip.  Prior to Vegas, however, our first night on our March scouting trip was in Kanab, having scoped out that town and the village of Fredonia (meaning “free women”) before that.  We found Midwestern-style barns just one block away from Fredonia’s Main Street, combined with the traditional Mormon irrigation ditches, very wide streets, and centrally located LDS church.  In Kanab we found all that, plus a Mormon cemetery with images of the Salt Lake temple etched into the headstones.  What a great place to bring a class!  We stayed at a little motel on Main Street, Kanab.  The hostess at the office was thrilled: we were her first seasonal guests, and lucky for us, they had just finished renovating.  For $39 how could we go wrong?  Right next door was the local theater, still open on Main Street, unlike many other towns where the downtown theater was a thing of the past.  Eventually, I would tell my students about our experience at the theater that night.
     While walking around downtown Kanab during our scouting trip, my wife and I noticed that the movie called “The Family Man,” would be showing at 8:00 that Friday night, and we had little else to do.  I thought immediately of the typical – though positive – stereotype: “what an appropriate movie for a Mormon town”.  So we showed up at just before 8pm, and the theater quickly packed in with locals.  My guess is that we were some of the few, if not the only, visitors there.  We sat near the back, and we immediately noticed some typical small-town characteristics that made this theater distinctive.  First, the roof was clearly rotting away, and the ceiling way up high had all sorts of water stains.  Ceiling material itself was crumbling and hanging down, some of which had already fallen to the seats below, presumably cleaned up prior to a show.  The curtains were ragged, and seats were falling apart.  Aside from that, the place was huge: one of those old, large theaters, I think with a balcony in the back, with only one screen.  Interestingly, the place got loud, quickly.  Everyone seemed to know everyone else, shouting at one another across the isles, seemingly with a thousand conversations going on simultaneously.  Then all of a sudden the lights went down and the feature film came on.  No trailers, no previews, no commercials or corporate jingles for the various movie companies.  Just the movie.  It took about 10 more minutes for the audience to quiet down itself. High-schoolers were running around up front, jockeying for better seats and joking around, and the rest of the audience was treating it like some kind of reunion night – probably a local type of reunion that occurs once a week on Friday nights.  The theater was still the place to be in Kanab.  You won’t find that much anymore.
     Having made our way through Zion National Park, St. George, and finally Vegas, we enjoyed the Vegas Strip for an afternoon.  We walked the entire Strip to the south, ending up at the “edge” of town, now adorned by the gleaming skyscrapers of “New York, New York” casino-resort and its faux Statue of Liberty.  From our hotel at Treasure Island, I thought ahead about how we would get three vans down onto the Strip and parked with as little hassle as possible.  The eventual plan was fine: exit I-15 just outside the Treasure Island, taking the side road down to the strip, and parking the vans in the Treasure Island “oversized” lot in the rear.  We would avoid the congested strip almost entirely.  We would leave via the same route, out to the freeway, to a connection three miles up with the highway to Boulder City.
     Finally, on the afternoon of the third day of the Utah trip, it was crunch time.  The class was arriving in Vegas.  Ultimately, the plan of approach that I had so carefully crafted did not occur as I had hoped, but at least I had some idea of what I was doing.  As we fussed with the CB radios, mentioned above, I took the lead into Vegas, since they seemed to think I knew where I was headed.  Lee and I often traded off with being the lead van, depending on who knew the area best and what topics we wanted to teach.  This time it was my turn, and I was not just a little nervous.  I was not used to leading vans into cities like this one, and one of our CBs would not transmit.
     There is one rise at the top of a ridge along I-15 where all of a sudden the diverse and ever-changing skyline of Vegas pops into view.  From that point on, the city had the students’ attention.  I was watching them in my rear-view mirror as I often did, and they were transfixed at the skyline.  The closer we approached, the larger the urban agglomeration became, and they started to show a little bit more activity from their previous sleepy selves earlier in the trip.  As we got closer, traffic increased, the number of lanes increased, and I started to look for my necessary landmark, the Treasure Island sign.  I knew that the exit would be near there, as I didn’t want to make the mistake of exiting the freeway prematurely, only to have to sluggishly make our way down three miles of Strip.  Well, we made it to Sahara Blvd., and I thought that was it.  It was hard for me to pay attention to traffic and seek out the sign simultaneously.  Thus, I exited, got up onto the overpass that would swing us around to the east in the direction of the Strip, and I barked orders to the other vans through the CB: “we’re exiting to the right, stay in the right lane, exit so-and-so, make sure you head left up over the bridge…”  They followed as planned.
     To my dismay, we came to the intersection of the Strip, and I noticed that Treasure Island was still at least two miles further down.  Ugh!  So much for planning.  Well, there’s a silver lining to everything (almost), and for the next 20 minutes we meandered our way down the Strip, waiting for bumper-to-bumper traffic the whole way, perhaps making a good 5 miles per hour on average.  It was worth it.  The students in Gray Van were amazed, even if they had been there recently like some of them had, they were all virtually pushing the windows out to get a better view.  It was like a drive through fantasyland, and there was too much to see and absorb in just one passing.  But they were transfixed, and I was happy to see that.  I didn’t know if they’d react in a nonchalant manner and stay asleep, or if they would actually be interested.  Finally, I had my answer.
     The other vans were not within visual range, given the trucks and cars behind me, so I kept barking orders through the CB as we approached Treasure Island.  We made it to the back of the resort, winding through back-road intersections that connected parking garages to resorts, and I started wondering how far back exactly the “oversize parking” would be.  After traveling some distance to the back of the property, I was still following the “oversized parking” signs – which seemed to be leading us right out of Vegas – with their arrows indicating “straight ahead”.  The other vans followed me into a sort of traffic circle and I stopped.  Fortunately, there was a police officer on a bicycle, and I rolled down my window to ask him where we should go.  He told me that the lot I was seeking was quite a walk from the Strip, and so I thought quickly and asked him if there were any other options.  He suggested valet parking, and he said it would be fine for the vans, so leading us on his bicycle we followed him to the valet lot at the Mirage casino next door.  It was good that I had found him, and that he was friendly, because otherwise the experience could have been worse.  It was free parking, and they actually gave us tags and parked the vans for us.  Upon our return, we could retrieve the vans and be on our way!  It worked wonderfully, something I will remember for next time, if that casino-resort is still there at all.  Vegas resorts have a habit of imploding their developments every so often to build something new.
     At the valet drop-off in front of the hotel, we evacuated the vans with cameras and notebooks, and Lee and I did another one of our instant time checks to determine by “committee” (Lee and I) when they should return.  It was 12:50, so we decided that 3pm would be the time to depart.  Students were instructed to be back at 3pm, get some lunch, and do their comparative analysis assignment of two casino-resorts of their choice.  This would be the test: would they come back on time, and in what condition?  This would be the test to see if they could plan their time accordingly.  Silently, Lee and I knew that we probably wouldn’t leave such a complicated and unpredictable place until around 3:30, so that gave us a half-hour “fudge-factor” to get the students accumulated again and our vans back into our own control.
     With that, we all scattered to the wind, and Lee and I decided to check out the “Venetian” across the street for some lunch.   For some reason, Lee was interested in a specific thing that he had seen a few years back during a previous trip to Vegas.  He mentioned to me that there was an indoor mall-type setting where there was a moving blue sky with changing colors on the ceiling area, and I thought he might mean the sky they painted over the boat rides in the Venetian.  Linda and I had seen that in march, and I figured we could get some food there as well.  Basically these places were glorified shopping malls, something that occurred to me as we experienced Caesar’s Palace across the street: basically, “shopper-tainment,” as one of my books about urban theming discusses.  That is, shopping malls with themes and gimmicks attached to promote consumption.  Of course, the consumption thing is the entire reason why these resorts are set up in the first place, and they are highly centralized and controlled, using their spatial interiors to promote consumption in as many ways they can.  The students were learning this, through my previous instruction, and they finally got to see how it worked.  But still, for their grandness and greater-than-life scale, these casino-resorts were no more than indoor shopping malls, sometimes with a river and boats running through it, and moveable skies overhead.  Lee thus enjoyed even the fake atmospheres, almost as much as he does the real ones.
     After lunch at the Venetian's food court, Lee and I both realized that neither of us had seen Caesar’s Palace, across the street, so we wound our way through the casinos, malls, and conveyor pedestrian bridges across the Strip to the Palace.  It’s truly amazing how deep into these developments you can get, even without ever seeing the casino.  The pattern in most of them is something like what we found at Caesar’s: a long, winding indoor mall with “moving” sky, then a central rotunda with Greek statues and fountains, then another long mall corridor, and another central rotunda, then yet another corridor of shops and finally a third rotunda, known as the “Forum Shops”.  We had ventured deep into the bowels of this consumer-driven empire of fakeness, and it was just before 2 pm.  People, we noticed easily, were starting to gather around this giant fountain at the center.  Around the rotunda I noticed some establishments I had only read about previously, all part of what John Hannigan has called the “theme-o-centric fantasy city”.  To the right was the “Discovery Channel Store,” and next to it was the famed “Nike-Town,” basically a shoe and sporting goods store with various elements of a theme park, complete with a museum inside to celebrate the “wide world of sports”.  Just down the corridor from there was a “Planet Hollywood,” the glowing red sign of which I tried to get a photo of (it came out fine).
     In any case, the audience was right, and a fully automated show began right at 2pm inside this central fountain.  Complete oversized Greek figures, water spouts and flame throwers, the poor acoustics of the rotunda were no match for the speaker system that attempted to blurt out this 7-minute-long production.  The story was about how the Roman emperor, as far as I could tell, perched way up on his throne, trying to decide whether his daughter or son would take over control of the empire.  While we couldn’t hear all that was said – it sounded more like those horrible speakers at a fast food drive-through – it was clear that brother and sister were exchanging nasty threats to one another in their attempt to gain control of the empire.  With their robot-like arms swaying around and heads turning around, these giant figures tried to convince their father and their audience that they should inherit the empire.  Unfortunately (or perhaps not), we couldn’t understand how it ended.  The emperor at one point asked the audience to vote verbally for one or the other, and of course the woman won the vote.  Then they disappeared down into the fountain again, and the emperor attempted to voice a conclusion to the whole affair.  Finally, a big dragon-like monster appeared over the head of the emperor, and he, too, disappeared – but not before his grandiose advertisement was finished: he instructed all to continue the adventure by stepping through the doors of the new IMAX theater to see the featured show called “Race for Atlantis”.  What we had just seen was a multi-million dollar advertisement for a movie.  For some people it worked, as they walked blindly over to the gates of the theater to purchase their tickets.  This is Vegas, and this scenario, I realized, was repeated in every casino-resort on the Strip, just with different gimmicks.  So, this is what half of Los Angeles comes to see on the holidays.  In some ways, very impressive.  In others, perhaps an insult to human intelligence.
     Instead of doing the IMAX thing, Lee and I decided to check out the Discovery Channel store, one I had never heard of before.  As expected, it was cluttered with rich-people’s toys, typically geared to the idea of science: magic tricks, crystal balls, candles, rocks, telescopes, astronomy books, and the like.  Realizing I had a date with the bathroom, I told Lee that I would meet him back at the vans at 3pm.  Somehow, he made it back before I did, and in time to ask for our vans back.  When I arrived at exactly 3pm, all three vans were lined up and ready to go.  Wow, a good start I thought.  In the next ten minutes, groups of students were filtering in and starting to get into the vans.  Finally, those of us who were there had the vans ready to go at about 3:15, and finally the last group of students appeared, a bit late, but within our targeted time window.  As I checked with the other vans over the CBs to make sure we were all present and accounted for, it was discovered that one student was missing (I’ll call him Jake for purposes here).  No surprise to us, as this kid was always late, and always the last one to pack up his tent in the morning.  Well, here we go again, I thought.  To his credit, Jake had struggled to do anything he could to graduate, worked his way through school, and college had not been easy for him.  This trip would be no different.
     We had warned all the students on the first day of class that we would not hesitate to leave them somewhere if they were not on time.  George Van Otten, we told them, had left someone in, I think, Tusayan, five years earlier.  Lee also told them in a serious manner to have a “life line,” like on the Millionaire show, in case they get stranded somewhere.  Well, Jake decided to “push the outer envelope” as they say, and he almost missed the boat in Vegas.  With vans running and air conditioning on, we were all ready to depart Vegas, but Jake was still missing.  Finally, Lee asked me impatiently over the radio, “what do you want to do?” and I waited a few seconds to reply because I truthfully wasn’t sure.  I was about to respond that we should wait ten minutes, until 3:30, and if he wasn’t back by then, take off.  Before I could, however, I saw him running hard in the rear view mirror, coming up to the vans from behind.  At that point, my Gray Van students showed no mercy, chanting “Leave Jake, Leave Jake, Leave Jake”.  (For the remainder of the trip, they occasionally re-used the chant to rag on some of our own van's students who were the last ones in.)  It was all somewhat humorous.  Well, Jake jumped in his van, and we headed for the freeway.  In front of the group, to make a point to everyone, I told Jake at our stop in Boulder City that he had come to within 10 minutes of being left behind.  To this day I still don’t know why he was late, but his peers seemed to think that he had decided to eat too late and got stuck at a buffet.  Gotta love it.
     I admit that I did have fun giving traffic instructions to the vans behind me, and I think they needed it as we got back on I-15 heading north to the interchange.  Lots of construction, lots of traffic, and lots of lane-changes.  Finally at the interchange I was barking “take exit 42B, not 42A, go UNDER the bridge first, do not take the ramp,” as it was easily mistakable, and to get one of the vans lost there would not have been good, even with the CBs.  Well, we all made it, and a half hour later we had escaped the traffic of “Sin City”.  The “experiment” had been pretty successful.  I don’t know yet how much “data” they collected, but the students had survived, and the vans were fine.  They left wanting more, which I actually viewed as a good thing.  They claimed to not have enough time in Vegas, which means that we kept them hopping, and having a good time.  Always leave them wanting more, as they say.  It works in many situations.

[Top: Students ready to experience the Vegas Strip.]
[Top Center: A "cliff-hanger" at Zion National Park, students enjoying the view.]
[Bottom Center: Inside Caesar's Palace Resort: one of numerous themed restaurants and stores.]
[Bottom: The Caesar's Palace Complex from across the Strip.]